THE ROMANCE _of the_ WOODS
_by_
F. J. WHISHAW.
Author of "_Out of Doors in Tsarland_."
_London,
Longmans Green & Co.
and New York._
1895
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. ON A RUSSIAN MOOR 1
II. IN AMBUSH AT THE LAKE-SIDE 33
III. A DAY AFTER CRAWFISH 55
IV. A FINLAND PARADISE 75
V. AFTER DUCKS ON LADOGA 105
VI. ABOUT BEARS: BY ONE OF THEM 115
VII. THE FOLK-LORE OF THE MOUJIK 185
VIII. THE BEAR THAT DIED OF CURSES 212
IX. AMONG THE WOOD-GOBLINS 232
X. AN UNBAPTIZED SPIRIT 253
XI. A WITCH! A WITCH! 273
THE ROMANCE OF THE WOODS
CHAPTER I
ON A RUSSIAN MOOR
I once had a strange dream. I dreamed that I was dead, and that dying
I suddenly discovered all my preconceived ideas as to the future state
to have been entirely erroneous, at any rate in so far as concerned
such persons as myself--the respectable middle class, so to call it,
of mundane sinners. Had I belonged to the aristocracy of piety and
goodness, which, alas! I did not, or had I occupied a position at the
lower end of the list, other things might have befallen me, better or
worse, as the case deserved; but being, as I say, one of the decently
respectable middle-class sinners, I was shown, in this foolish dream
of mine, into a committee-room marked No. 2, and there informed that
since I was neither very good nor very bad, my present destiny was to
continue to inhabit this planet for a number of years--I forget how
many--not, indeed, in my present corporeal form, but as a spiritual
essence; and that I might select any place this side of the dark
river, the Styx, as my temporary abode, there to live in Nature's
bosom and to assimilate and be assimilated until the simplicity and
beauty of Nature, uncontaminated by man, should have purified me of
all the harmful taints which I had acquired during my terrestrial
existence among fellow-mortals.
And I remember that, in my dream-foolishness, I clasped my hands and
fell on my knees, and with streaming eyes assured the committee of
Mahatmas (for such, in the dream, they appeared to be) that I wished
for no more beautiful heaven than this that they had offered me; and
that I implored them to allow me to stay on for ever in the paradise
they had prepared for me, and never to pass me onward and upward to
attain further joys, however blessed!
And then, in my dream, those Mahatmas flashed their shining eyes at
me (there was very little _but_ eye and flowing cloak about them, I
remember), and said "Silence!" and frightened me thereby out of my
dream-dead wits.
That, they added, was not my affair nor theirs. All I had to do at
present was to make my choice of a place from among those I had best
loved during life, and to do so as quickly as I conveniently could,
because their hands were somewhat full of business this morning, and
they could not spare me more than, at most, five minutes.
I remember that I looked over my shoulder at this and perceived an
innumerable host of persons, all, presumably, in a similar position to
my own, and all ready to take their turns, in strict rotation, before
the committee of Mahatmas in room No. 2; and I could not help
reflecting that the middle-class sinner must indeed be a very large
class, and that I should do wisely to select some rather unfrequented
spot for my future home, lest my domain should be trespassed upon by
other spiritual essences, and my peace marred by--to use a mundane
expression--unseemly rows.
And then I became conscious of a great difficulty in the matter of
this choosing of a place to live in. Picture after picture came up
before my mind's eye, each more fascinatingly beautiful than the
other. There was a lovely little bit of Devonshire coast, and another
shore in Pembrokeshire; there were delicious spots in half the
counties of England--woods, and hedgerows, and rivers, and waving
fields wherein my spiritual being might disport itself in the
contemplation of the teeming secret life of Nature; there were
Kensington Gardens, a certain central glade of which I had loved well
enough, and which my spiritual essence might find a handy spot in case
the longing for human fellowship were to assail me--when I could so
easily perch myself unseen amid the branches of a tree overlooking
Bayswater Road, and drink in, to my heart's content, the familiar
sights and sounds of London, or even take a ride on the top of an
Acton 'bus; but at this point of my reflections one of the Mahatmas
wagged his head at me and said:
"Oh no! You can't do that, you know. No 'bus-driving. Twenty miles
from any town, if _you_ please!"
It did not strike me as curious that this Mahatma should have read my
thoughts, neither did it occur to me to wonder how he knew that I was
animadverting upon the delights of the twopenny 'bus. However, his
remark narrowed my field of selection, and I thought on as intensely
as I could. I crossed the seas and flew, in spirit, to Finland, to a
lovely island in the midst of a beautiful river--the Voksa--teeming
with trout, great and small, and with silver grayling; and then I
thought of Ostramanch, the home of the capercailzie, of the blackcock;
the scene of a hundred and one superb days with the gun, and of as
many nights spent in the perfect happiness of solitude and observation
beneath the tall pines and the bright stars of the northern sky, in
the hush and the solemn majesty of the darkness and silence. And I had
almost cried, "Give me Ostramanch!" when I remembered that this dearly
loved spot would not, after all, do. It had passed from English into
Russian hands, and my spiritual self could never be really happy there
under such circumstances. What if my essence were suddenly to happen
upon a Russian sportsman taking a family shot at a young covey of
blackgame or willow-grouse, huddled together upon a sand-dune, or
hiding behind a tuft of purple-fruited bilberry? Could my spiritual
voice cry out upon such a deed, or my spiritual fingers close upon
the throat of the delinquent, or my phantasmal toe perform a corporeal
function? Could I even spread bony arms before his eyes and play
the common vulgar ghost upon him, to punish him withal? Alas! I
thought, no. Ostramanch will not do. And then, at last, the picture
of Erinofka rose before my eyes, and I knew that I had found my Fate.
I pictured myself strolling year-long over the purple moors, through
the dark belts of forest, by bog and morass and snipe-haunted waste.
I remembered many trudges--days of delight--in those same woods,
gun-laden, full of ardour, unwearied by day-long tramping, oblivious
of hunger, impatient of oncoming darkness; and I imagined myself
repeating such delightful experiences _ad infinitum_, and laughed
aloud in the joy of my foolish dream-heart. The Mahatmas immediately
interfered; they flashed their great eyes and fluttered their long
black mantles at me, and cried:
"No guns, no guns!"
"And no fishing-rods!" added one of them.
"What! no guns and no rod?" I said, growing grave very suddenly. To be
at Erinofka and never to hear the popping of another cartridge seemed
a dreadful prospect.
"Oh, you can carry a gun if you please," said the presiding Mahatma,
who was growing strangely like a London police magistrate, "but you
must use smokeless and noiseless powder, and no shot."
"And a rod without a reel," said another Mahatma.
"And a line without a hook," added a third.
"And see that you have a license," put in a fourth.
"But, sirs," I began, "what am I to do with myself, if I may not----"
"Take life?" interrupted the Chairman. "Silence, prisoner at the bar,
and learn to be happy without killing! To Erinofka with him, gaoler!"
"How long, your worship?" said that functionary.
Four thousand five hundred years was, I think, the figure, but it may
have been four hundred thousand. I was still puzzling over the matter
when I awoke. Afterwards, when I thought upon this dream of mine, it
struck me that my sentence was, after all, a most enviable one.
Thousands of years at Erinofka, with no terrestrial cares to weigh me
down; face to face and heart to heart with Nature, learning her
secrets day long; a life-atom among myriads of others; a little part
of an infinite whole; harmless, free, careless, contented, in
fellowship with bird and beast and insect, and with every form of life
that has a vested interest in wood and moor and wet morass. For such
an existence I had chosen, I thought, the right place. At any rate my
spiritual essence, if weary of wandering about armed with a gun that
would not work, could amuse itself by recalling those dear,
unregenerate days when guns, unprohibited by stern Mahatmas, popped
freely, and reels craked, and when the glad voice of the sportsman was
heard upon these moors, and among them my own, together with the
popping of many terrestrial cartridges. One day, especially, and that
the day of my first acquaintance with the place, lingers more fondly
than others in the memory, and would afford material for much
spiritual contemplation, perhaps even unto forty-five thousand years,
if there were nothing better to do! And it is of that particular day
that I propose to tell, now that this somewhat extended preface has
been got through.
It was Jemmie, of course, who introduced me to Erinofka. Any one in
St. Petersburg will tell you who Jemmie is, for he is a popular
character there, and is known and loved by all. Well, it was Jemmie
who proposed a day at Erinofka, a day among the juveniles; the
younglings of the blackcock and of the willow-grouse, and perhaps a
peep at the princelings of his majesty king capercailzie. It was early
in the summer, perhaps too early; but shooting in the Tsar's domains
begins considerably earlier in the year than we, in this country, are
accustomed to take gun in hand, and the sportsman may there sally
forth on July 27, if it please him, and shoot young game without
breaking any laws. It was not quite so early as this when Jemmie
carried me--a willing captive--to Erinofka, but August was still very
young, and so were some of the coveys; though, thanks to a fine warm
season, many or most of these were marvellously well-grown; but of
this anon. Erinofka is blessed, or cursed, with a most marvellous
little railway of its very own, a kind of toy track from town, laid
down for the convenience of a peat-cutting establishment not very far
from the shooting-box which was our objective point. The railway is
very narrow, and the omnibus-like carriages, which the public are
allowed to occupy for a consideration and at their own risk, are very
top-heavy; and the driver of the little engine is generally very
drunk, all of which circumstances combine to make this Erinofka heaven
quite as difficult of attainment as the very highest of Mahomet's, and
the journey a matter not to be undertaken without deep thought, much
repentance, and a visit from the family lawyer. The line looks
something like the toy track at Chatham--that upon which youthful
officers of the Royal Engineers are or were wont to disport
themselves; a pastime devised, I believe, by the War Office, for the
twin purposes of teaching the British officer how to drive a
locomotive, and how best to fall off it with dignity when the engine
runs off the rails.
Jemmie tells me that before the peat-people built this line it had
been necessary to bump along to Erinofka as best one could, over the
most awful roads that human bones ever creaked upon, a distance of
forty or fifty miles; but that now, if only you can secure the sober,
the _comparatively_ sober driver, the journey is a sweet boon. It
appears that there are three drivers on this line--Matvey, who is
always very drunk indeed; Ivan, who is always rather drunk and
sometimes highly intoxicated; and Yegor, who has been known to be
sober. I have not seen the man who saw Yegor sober; but it is
confidently asserted that he has been observed in this unusual
condition, and that he is rarely more than half drunk.
Well, I seldom have much luck, and when I went with Jemmie to Erinofka
upon that little narrow railway, in a wide long carriage that might
have served as a portion of the G.W.R. rolling stock in its
unregenerate broad-gauge days, we had Matvey to drive our engine.
Matvey had, to put it mildly, been drinking, and he desired to drink
again. Now, Matvey knew very well that he could get no more vodka
until he reached Erinofka, and this is why we travelled at a pace
which was bound to end, and did shortly end, in disaster. In a word,
we ran off the line three miles or so from the start, and that we did
not also run down a steep embankment into a river was certainly not
Matvey's fault; we could not have gone much nearer the edge than we
did.
However, Erinofka was reached in safety at last, and--since our
accident had delayed us at least two hours--right ravenously did we
fall upon the good cheer set out for us by the head-keeper, Hermann,
and his wife. One item of this repast, at least, I remember vividly:
an enormous dish piled to the height of nearly a foot with luscious
wild strawberries. It would be unfair to give my friend away in the
matter of those strawberries; but I will say that Jemmie partook
with freedom of the fruit, and that I myself tasted, well, a few
berries. The armchairs in the Erinofka sitting-room were remarkably
comfortable, I remember, after that repast, and the conversation
languished. But we were to be up and away at half-past three A.M.;
for we must drive a matter of seven miles to the moor we intended to
work on the morrow, and the courteous Hermann--who had cleared away
the large empty dish which had contained so many strawberries with but
one convulsive movement of the facial muscles and a quick glance of
polite consternation in the direction of the reposing James--this
courteous Hermann very gently reminded us that it was now eleven, and
that between that hour and three was embraced the entire period
devotable by us to sleeping off the effects of railway accidents and
arctic strawberries, all of which was so very true that we sighed, and
rose from those blest armchairs and went to bed.
The baying and barking of four excited dogs (who knew as well as we
did that the first shoot of the season was to come off on this day)
rendered unnecessary Hermann's polite knockings at the bedroom doors,
and his gentlemanly intimation that the day was all that could be
expected of it, and the hour--three. When Shammie, and Carlow, and
Kaplya, and Bruce are performing a quartette at 3 A.M., even Jemmie
cannot sleep, and we were both wide-awake and discussing matters
when Hermann came to hound us to breakfast. Breakfast was somewhat
of a failure, I remember. Did I mention that we had taken a few
strawberries at 10.30 P.M.? Well, we had; and it was found that the
circumstance militated against a hearty British appetite at 3 A.M.
However, this being so, the less time was wasted before starting for
the moor. There is something, to me, peculiarly fascinating and
exhilarating about this starting out on the first day of shooting; but
oh! that seven mile drive to the moor. The roads were so absolutely
and utterly vile, and the cart so unspeakably uncomfortable, that no
reader would believe me were I to attempt to describe the misery of
driving under such conditions. But Jemmie, bless him! smiled on and
smiled ever; and I--not to be outdone in exuberance of spirits this
superb morning--pretended that I enjoyed being bumped about like a
hailstone on a hard lawn. All four dogs were with us. They lay, at the
start, quiescent enough at the bottom of the vehicle; but alas! not
for long. In the first fifty yards Shammie was on my lap, and Bruce
with his arms round Jemmie's neck; in the second I found, to my
surprise, that a cartridge-box had usurped Shammie's place on my knee,
and that Shammie's head and my shin were exchanging civilities at the
bottom of the cart. Occasionally the driver was sprawling on the back
of the shaft horse, and now and again he was shot violently upon the
top of Jemmie or me, or suddenly appeared, wrong way up, between us.
Occasionally also we found that the dogs and we had changed places,
and that we lay struggling on the floor of the cart while they stood
on their heads, or sat with surprised and pained expressions upon the
seat. Nothing mattered. Jemmie smiled, and I tried to. What though our
shins were black and blue with the misplaced attentions of cartridge
cases and gun stocks? What though the dogs whined and grew absurdly
angry with one another, showing signs of an imminent general
engagement? What though Jemmie bounded into air--bird-like--and nested
upon the top of my head, or I on his? Nothing matters on the first day
of shooting; disasters are a joke, and battered heads and limbs are
contributions to the hilarity of the proceedings. Ah, well! the dogs
limped ostentatiously when we arrived, and Jemmie and I were very,
very stiff, but oh! so happy, and I, at all events, grateful and
amazed to find myself all in one piece, and we paced slowly through
the first belt of thick, gameless pine-wood, thinking unutterable
things, and with a decided tendency to quote poetry when the tongue
would wag.
Half a mile of barren trudging and then the forest begins to lighten;
the young day sends golden smiles to greet us through the trees;
wherever there is room for a ray or two of his glory to pass, he
stretches a hand to us. "Come," he seems to say, "come out upon the
moor and bathe yourselves in my full favour; my good, gigantic smile
is over all this morning!" And here is the moor itself, a sight to set
the heart a-beating on this first day of the season; stretching wide
and rich before us; miles across; limitless, apparently, from end to
end; and, as we believe and hope, teeming with game if only we can hit
upon the coveys.
What a lot of trouble it would save, I suggest foolishly, if one had
a divining-rod that showed the whereabouts of the birds! "_Proh
pudor!_" says James, and rightly, "the dogs are our divining-rods."
As to these dogs, Shammie and Carlow are setters--Shammie a red Irish,
Carlow a blue Belton, and wild at that. The other two are Russian-bred
pointers of English parentage--good animals both, and well trained,
according to his lights, by Hermann. The setters both hail from a
Scottish moor, and are to-day on their trial in this unfamiliar
country. Their journey has lost them none of their keenness--look at
them now! Shammie, cool and collected, businesslike, making no false
move, but ardent and determined; Carlow, half a mile off, but back
again in no time and hundreds of yards away on the opposite tack, the
quickest and wildest dog, surely, that ever ranged. Kaplya and Bruce
hunt close to their trainer--we are giving all four of them a breather
just to settle their nerves; but presently two will be taken in while
two do the work.
Suddenly Shammie stops dead; so do, for an instant, my heart and
pulses. Kaplya and Bruce back instantly, stiff as marble. Carlow is
coming in at racing speed, but sees the others when fifty yards away,
and lies down automatically. Shammie's tail wags slightly, and we feel
that there may be a disappointment before us; but he turns and looks
at us; and observing that we are taking him seriously, stiffens into a
dead point. It must be business.
"You take first shot," says generous Jemmie; "if it's a covey, your
birds are on the right and mine on the left."
The first shot of the season! how absurdly my heart is beating. I
wonder the birds do not hear it and get up wild.
Suddenly, twenty yards from us, there is a rustle and a flutter of
strong wings, and a grey hen rises without clucking, and lifting
herself gracefully over the young birch saplings, floats away over the
moor.
"_Matka!_" (Hen!) shouts Hermann, and to the surprise and disgust
of the dogs, no cartridge explodes. Shammie smiles and pants, and
looks round at us in a pained though kindly manner; he hopes it is all
right, but reflects that they generally get their guns off in Scotland
when he shows them the game. Jemmie declares that, if it were lawful,
he would spare none of these old barren hens; he is convinced, he
says, that they do great damage by bullying the younger hens and
chasing them from the moor, in order themselves to monopolise the
attentions of the gentlemen of the family.
Oh! the jealousy of the female sex. Jemmie may be perfectly right; and
I fancy that he is; but what do the old blackcock, or (for the matter
of that) the young blackcock, think of such proceedings? What would
the marrying men of our branch of life think or do, if the old maids
should succeed in banishing all that was young and beautiful in order
to promote their own chances of mating?
But it is very hot, and Jemmie suggests that the birds will be lying
at the edge of the moor beneath the shade of the pines, and thither we
trudge through the heavy moss and heather. The going is always
terribly heavy until the first bird is grassed: after which event, I
have observed, the tramping loses much of its weariness and the
shooting-boots their weight, and when a dozen brace or so have been
secured, the feet that bear the delighted trudger are winged feet.
Nevertheless, we walk for a full hour and are still--as to our
game-bags--as empty as when we started. We see no beauty in the lovely
moor, at this period. The dogs, we feel, are failures, all four of
them. Hermann, too, is a fraud, for did he not declare that there were
eight fine coveys within a radius of a mile upon this very moor. Where
are those coveys, Hermann? Did we submit to be shuttlecocked over your
ghastly parody of a road in order to be humbugged by you at the end of
it? Where are these coveys? I say. Such, or to this effect, were the
remarks of Jemmie. I think during those first two hours of
unremunerative trudging, he vowed to shoot all four of his dogs, sell
his guns and his cartridges, give up shooting, and devote his entire
energies to gardening and lawn tennis, with a little fishing and a
trifle of archery; I rather think Hermann and the other keepers were
to share the fate of the dogs; I forget whether I was to die, I think
I was; but at the end of two hours the luck changed and Jemmie smiled,
and dogs and keepers and I all breathed again.
It was Kaplya that stumbled upon the first covey. Carlow was being led
just then and so was Bruce, and good Shammie had by this time formed
unflattering opinions as to the Russian moors in comparison with those
of Scotland; consequently he was cantering about scientifically
enough, but half-heartedly, ranging in an unconvinced and unconvincing
manner, ready to oblige by doing his share of this foolish work, but
feeling that in his case it was time and talent wasted. Probably he
was wondering when the next train started for Scotland, and deciding
to take it and go hence to places where the moors were not dummy
moors, but the bonâ fide habitations of grouse and blackgame, when he
suddenly caught sight of old Kaplya at a dead point in front of his
very nose, while perhaps that organ was at the same instant assailed
by the unexpected evidence of the proximity of something better than
heather and bilberry plants. At any rate, down went Shammie as if
shot, in as correct a pose as a "backing" setter can assume.
Instantly, also, Carlow and Bruce sat down, the former so suddenly
that Ivan, the under-keeper, who held him, tripped over him and
measured his length, letting Carlow go, chain and all, to join the
party of stiffened doghood at our knees.
This time there was no disappointment. After a moment or two of that
intense waiting which every sportsman knows and loves--while the
birds, hidden somewhere in the heather or greenery, are eyeing their
human and canine disturbers, and wondering what is best to be done,
whether to run or fly, or remain crouching--there came the usual
pulse-fluttering rustle, and up and away went three superb young
blackcock, nearly full grown, two to Jemmie's side, one to my own.
For all I know to the contrary, my blackcock may still be alive and
entertaining his friends with the narrative of how a foolish and
excitable Englishman once drew a bead upon him in his youth, and drew
it awry. In a word, my too agitated pulses blinded my eye and unnerved
my hand, and I missed that lordly youngling handsomely and entirely.
Not so James and his brace of beauties. Jemmie is a deadly shot, and I
would as soon sit on a fizzing bomb as play the blackcock to his
unerring barrel; he grassed both his birds; and I knew that the dogs
and keepers were now safe, and that the guns of my friend would not,
yet awhile, be put up for sale.
But trusty Kaplya and Shammie still stood on; there were more of this
interesting family to come. Recaptured Carlow pulled and strained at
his leash; Bruce softly whined and trembled spasmodically, sitting on
Stepan's foot.
Up started a fourth blackcock, accompanied by his mother; with
bewildering suddenness they rose and hurtled away, the old lady
dropping a last word of advice to the youngsters still remaining
vacillating behind. I imagined her clucks to mean, "Oh, you foolish
little creatures! why do you not fly when your mamma gives the lead?
Fly always after a shot, when the guns are empty."
This time black death darted from my right barrel, calling to his last
account a very beautiful young blackcock, nearly as large as his
mother, who of course escaped scot free, triumphing--as she
supposed--by reason of her wisdom. But the dogs still stood on.
This is the best, as it is the pitiful foolishness of the blackcock
younglings. Their fathers are birds of great wisdom and cunning; their
mothers are sagacious and experienced; but the little ones are
headstrong and foolish, and love to act independently of their elders.
Instead of flying altogether as grouse and partridges do, and thus
enjoying each a chance of escape as well as participating in the
common danger, they rise by ones and twos, and each bird becomes the
sole objective for the charge of the sportsman, thereby immensely
lessening his chance of flying between the pellets.
The first covey of the season was a grand one indeed, thirteen birds,
including the mother, and of these we slew, without leaving the
original spot, no less than nine. Jemmie beamed. He said sweet things
to Hermann, the lately abused and condemned; he patted the dogs and
"praised them to their face;" he declared that I had slain a full half
of the dead birds, whereas I knew well that three only had fallen to
my fire and six to his; he discovered that the walking was easy enough
when one grew used to it; he liked the sunshine; in a word, my friend
James had donned those spectacles whose glasses are of the colour of
the rose.
It was now seven o'clock; the heather and bilberry plants were still
"dew-pearled," and there were diamonds on every gossamer thread that
ran from leaf to leaf and from plant to plant; but the sun was hot
enough, by this, to dry up an ocean, and I knew these morn-gems would
not last much longer. I was glad when Jemmie proposed a short rest
(nominally for the dogs' sake), for there was all the beauty of the
morning to take in, and that is best done in a sitting or lying
posture. The panting of the dogs is almost the only sound--that and
the indescribable evidence of teeming life which you may hear in the
dead of the silence. Who makes that sound? What is it? Where is it? I
think it is Nature in travail; it is growth and development, the
never-resting activity of the spirit of life that moves upon the face
of the land.
Our nine little victims lie upon the heather before us, and Jemmie
weighs each in his hand and tries, very unnecessarily, their beaks
in order to be assured of their youth, and admires their growth,
and beams upon men and dogs in high good humour. I, too, criticise
the birds and am conscious of a stifling feeling of regret. Here
are nine beautiful little lives taken in as many minutes, taken
so easily--alas! but who could ever give back to these feathered
ruins the thing we have bereft them of? I know it is foolish to
sentimentalise thus over the dead creatures I came to destroy, and
will destroy again the very next time that I have an opportunity; but
the triumph of the sportsman is always a little marred, I think, by
this feeling of guilt--the guilt of having robbed mother Nature of
some of her beautiful children. She does very well without them, I
dare say, and if we had not secured them doubtless the kites and hawks
and foxes would have taken their share--probably as large a share as
this of ours; nevertheless, here they were an hour ago upon this moor,
alive and busy and beautiful; and now they are not, and _we_ did
it.
Nevertheless, again, we are up and about and ready to "do it" once
more after a quarter of an hour's repose; and the next thing we chance
upon is a covey of chirping and twittering little willow-grouse,
scarcely free of the egg-shells, a tiny, confiding flock that flit
chattering and scolding after their brown and white mother, annoyed to
be disturbed and made to use their lovely little mottled wings in
flight, and anxious to settle again before twenty yards have been
covered. We send a laugh after the little family, instead of a
hailstorm of No. 7, and leave them to grow and fatten; they shall
enjoy the delights of life on this moor for three good weeks, if not
four, ere the leaden death shall make Erinofka the poorer by their
perfectly marked little persons. Then an old blackcock, unaware that
Jemmie and his choked left barrel are about, foolishly lets us
approach within fifty yards of his sanctuary, and rising with a crow
of defiance, subsides instantly at the bidding of the unerring James,
with a groan and a gasp--dead.
Presently a superb covey of willow-grouse (who are the parents of our
own red variety of the family) rise with a whirr and a loud laugh from
the old cock, leave their tribute of four upon the heather--and
vanish. We see them flit like a white cloud over the open moorland,
rise like one being to top the bushes, flash their wings in the sun as
they wheel round in the traditional manner of their tribe before
settling, and then we suddenly lose sight of them and see them no
more.
"They are down among the aspens," said Jemmie. Hermann dissented.
"They wheeled right round the spinney," he says, "and settled well
beyond it."
Ivan takes the side of Jemmie, and Stepan sides with his chief. I am
neutral. I saw them up to a point but not beyond it; I saw the sun tip
their white feathers with fire as they wheeled and then lost them; but
I know how many there were--there were nineteen, no less, that
journeyed over the heather and into the spinney--a gigantic covey
indeed!
"Two coveys," says Jemmie; "the willow-grouse have a passion for
massing even in the chicken stage," which is perfectly true, while in
the autumn you may find a community of a hundred of them living
together.
Now were these birds little white ghosts, or real flesh and blood and
feathers? If not spectres, then where are they? This was the question
we asked of one another as, for a full hour, we paced and repaced, as
we believed, every inch of a square half mile of ground within which
the little wizards must inevitably be somewhere hidden. Hermann
explained the matter by declaring that they had settled altogether in
a huddled mass, and had not moved a muscle since; knowing, perhaps
instinctively, that by preserving absolute immobility they would give
no scent. We may, and so may the dogs, have passed within a yard of
the hole or tuft in which the beady-eyed little creatures lay
crouched, watching us, scarcely breathing for terror, their poor
hearts and pulses going very fast as we come near and pass by and see
no sign of them.
But Carlow has the luck to stumble upon them. I am watching the dog,
and I see him stop suddenly in his mad career (Carlow's career is
always mad!), and bend over in an extraordinary position. There is the
covey, under his very nose. Alarmed, indeed, they are now, and their
necks are held straight and high; they attempt no further concealment;
their only anxiety is how to take wing without falling into the jaws
of this ogre--fox or whatever he may be. Carlow would sooner perish
than touch one of them; but they do not know this, poor things, and
peer helplessly and timidly this way and that in the extremity of
terror and uncertainty. I can examine them now at leisure for a moment
or two, and oh! what beautiful creatures they are. Where was ever so
soft a brown as this of theirs, or so pure a white? What bird ever
matched the graceful poise of their heads? What--there! they are off,
and I have missed them with both barrels; this comes of moralising.
Jemmie did not moralise, and he has dropped two of the beauties; but
there is a chance for me yet, for the covey has settled in the open,
no doubt about the exact spot this time, and not more than one hundred
and fifty yards away.
So we take in all the dogs excepting old Kaplya, who is as safe and
steady as the Rock of Gibraltar, and head straight for the place in
which we believe the birds to be lying. Old Kaplya raises her nose,
half turns towards us, smiles and winks (she positively does both), as
though she would say, "All right, keep your eye upon Kaplya; I'm
_on_ these birds already--follow me!" and away she goes straight
as a line, first cantering easily, then trotting a few yards, then
cautiously walking as many more, then slowly stopping, stiffening,
turning her nose now slightly to this side, now to that, then finally
fixing herself into the very perfect picture of a sure point.
Up they go, and off go my two barrels, rather too rapidly and
excitedly; off go Jemmie's also, but with more deliberation. To my
first shot a bird falls in tatters; to my second two succumb. I have
shot three of them, and Jemmie his usual brace. But, alas! my first
bird is but a mangled mass of feathers and broken bones, and there
must be a burial. Hide him deep beneath the moss and heather, Hermann,
and for pity's sake say no more about the circumstance; for in truth
my heart is like wax within me by reason of this wasted life. It is
pardonable and right, though perhaps regrettable, to take these lives
when we intend to use the shot-riddled carcases for our food, but to
blow a beautiful creature to pieces and to be obliged to bury its
remains is unpardonable.
We decide to leave the rest of this covey; we have levied sufficient
tribute upon it. And now the day is growing into middle age, and
Jemmie says that we will find one more family of willow-grouse or
blackgame and then take our mid-day meal and our siesta. We will
diverge into the thick belt of forest on the right, he says, and see
if we can find a covey of capercailzies.
I long to see another capercailzie before I die. For many a year I
have been absent from those moors whereon the great king of game-birds
holds his high court. Oh! if I could but come face to face--but
once--with the royal family, I could return to far-off England
content.
But, alas! the king was not to be found. Deep in the sanctuary of
mid-forest, somewhere beyond those tall, dark pines--perhaps miles
away--he had listened in proud disdain to the popping of our
cartridges upon the moor, and had laughed at our impotent endeavours
to outwit himself and his family of princelings. To-morrow, likely
enough, he would stalk about the moor from end to end, he and the
long-legged princes and princesses, his sons and daughters, and the
haughty lady his queen; but to-day, no, thank you! Not while James and
his deadly Holland were about!
We stumbled, however, upon a covey of blackgame, and levied full
tribute upon them in default of their big cousins; but now the
splendid August sun had
"Clomb up to heaven and kissed the golden feet of noon,"
and Jemmie declared that if we did not instantly settle down to our
legitimate lunch, he would not answer for it if he suddenly fell upon
me, or Hermann, or Shammie, or even perspiring Stepan and devoured
him. Accordingly, therefore, we selected our camp in a shady spot by a
moss-pool--for this bog-water was all that we should get to-day, and
we must use it or none for tea-making--and Hermann was instructed to
unpack the luncheon basket. Out came the good things, a profuse and
welcome procession of luxury--spring chickens, tongue, well-iced
butter, two bottles of claret, _Alexander Kuchen_ (oh! blessed
Alexander, whoever you may have been, to have invented so delicious a
dainty; may the sweet maidens of Valhalla feed you for ever with your
own Kuchen, oh Alexander! and may you eat heartily of it without
suffering or surfeiting), and arctic strawberries. For half an hour
we toyed, did James and I, with the viands, after which for two hours
we slept or rested; for during this time of high noon the birds
mysteriously disappear, and nor man nor dog may find them; and I lay
and dreamed dreams, a few sleeping and many waking ones; and the peace
and silence and restfulness of that mid-day in the forest entered into
my soul and abode there in a sense of infinite and lasting content,
which may be recalled--as through a phonograph--and reproduced at will
to this hour.
And then again, after a cup of tea concocted of bog-water, but
delicious notwithstanding, and after counting and recounting our
twelve or thirteen brace of victims, we pulled ourselves together and
trudged for four more hours, during which time we doubled our tale of
slaughter, or nearly so, and when the moment came that we must head
for the carts and return home to dine and catch the night train for
town, it was with sadness that we wended our way homewards. We had
spent twelve hours upon this pleasant moor indeed; but who would be
content with twelve? Twelve thousand were all too little of such
delight. On mature reflection I am quite determined that if my friends
the Mahatmas give me another dream-chance I shall jump at the offer of
Erinofka as a place of abode, however long the sentence be. What if
the spirit-gun will not go off? So long as I may tramp the heather and
see the game and carry over my shoulder the semblance of a gun to
point at it, even a dummy gun; so long as I may see the dew-pearled
gossamer, and feel the broad smile of the August sun, and hear the hum
and buzz and crackle and cluck of teeming life around me, I really do
not think I care so very much about the killing. And this is why I
declare that if the Mahatmas again offer me the Erinofka heaven I
shall accept it, ay, even unto forty-five thousand years!
Nevertheless, if they allow me a breechloader and cartridges instead
of that foolish spirit-gun of theirs, I shall certainly shoot.